WHAT ABE TAUGHT ME
Published in Western Biker
Jan/Feb 1982
He was tall, muscular, he owned a
Harley, but best of all he was my uncle. The year was 1952, I was five and I
idolized Uncle Abe and his machine.
Much of those days are a blur in my
memory. The one thing I never seem to have forgotten is the throb of that
V-twin. Abe would fire up that black
beauty, he’d boost me on behind him, tell me to hang on tight and away we’d
go. Down the gravel drive, out to
Cannor Road, to the Fraser Highway, through a mythical land of wind and sun we
thundered. I remember how Abe would
laugh as I clutched tighter to him on a heavy corner. Some days he’d ride the dike along the Fraser River down to
Bowmans Sawmill, to where my father sorted logs on the booms.
Abe was my father’s younger brother and
whether the work existed in those days, I don’t know, but I do know that they
were tight brothers.
The summer ended, Abe went back up the
coast to go logging, I started my first year of school. The bike I loved went into the garage.
I remember Abe had tried to teach my
father to ride that beast but in the orchard.
Somehow it got in an old plow rut, straight toward the cherry tree, that
sucker climbed halfway up the tree, with my father still hanging on, then
stalled. Next summer my father said
that he’d master it. Next summer when
Abe would be back and flying free.
One day after school, I arrived home and
the police car was in the driveway. My
mother was crying, my father looked sick, I didn’t understand then, but I
realized it had something to do with Uncle Abe not coming back. Very shortly thereafter a man came by, my
father wheeled Abe’s dream machine out of the garage. My father had tears in his eyes as the man rode away on the
bike. I just felt lost and lonely
seeing Abe’s ride go.
Later I was to learn that an open log
barge had grounded, upon being pulled off the sand bar, the violent jerk had
thrown Uncle Abe overboard. He’d gone
under the swift flowing waters and never surfaced.
It was thirteen years later that I got
my first Triumph. The first ride I took was along the Old Fraser Highway, now
cut up by a four-lane freeway, but as I hit the old section, I sat back and let
the throb of that Trump cruise through my system. I cornered heavy, leaned up,
turned on the wick, than it started. A
rumbling laugh deep in my stomach, it broke from my throat. The same laugh Abe used to laugh and I
remembered an Uncle, a bro who was loved and missed. An Uncle who had, those many years before, instilled biking in my
blood. I ride in memory of Abe, for all
those roads he never got to ride.
In love for Freedom.